Whereas the last efforts to retain aggrieved members of the new Peoples Democratic Party (nPDP) bloc in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) may be made before the end of this week, political pundits have started weighing the possibility of the current leadership of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to handle their comeback if talks fail.
Already, the leader of the nPDP bloc, Alhaji Kawu Baraje, had weekend, disclosed that members of the bloc would make their position on the way forward known before the end of the first week of July.
Besides, the first signal of the looming massive defection of nPDP and their supporters started on Monday this week, as another top member of APC, Hakeem Baba- Ahmed who is also the Chief of Staff to Senate President Bukola Saraki, dumped the party.
Though he did not give any hint of where (party) he was heading to, it would be recalled that Baba-Ahmed was the Kaduna State chairman of APC before his appointment as chief of staff to Saraki in 2017.
While addressing journalists in Kaduna, Ahmed said he has sent a letter of withdrawal from APC to the party chairman in his ward.
However, some key members of the APC are upbeat that the crisis settlement drive had crossed the chances of losing any key member of the APC including the aggrieved power bloc called the nPDP.
They derived their confidence from the way and manner the convention came and gone with everybody including members of nPDP being at the venue from beginning till the end and taking part in voting in new party exco.
But feelers from the opposition PDP showed that the party is eagerly waiting for a possible collapse of talks so that all their former top shots will return to the fold even with more supporters ahead of the 2019 elections.
Some political observers say if nPDP members happen to return to the PDP and PDP wins the 2019 presidential election, the nPDP will then stand a chance of being branded the real power brokers of Nigerian politics and that status will make them life key election decider going forward.
In a statement released by the Kawu Baraje Media Office in Ilorin on Sunday, nPDP averred that “We will make our positions known to Nigerians in the first week of July. By then, we would have concluded our consultations and come up with our position on all the things we stood for which are not for personal gains but rather in the general interest of the downtrodden masses.
“We have been meeting regularly and the time is now ripe to make our positions known to all well-meaning Nigerians.
“The cooperate interest of the citizens of this country and a united Nigeria where no man is oppressed is paramount and very dear to our hearts,” Baraje noted.
